Embrace of the Damned

by Bast, Anya

  He opened the back door, tossed her in like she was a rolled-up carpet. She yelped in pain as she collided with the hard, ridged surface of the van’s floor. The agent closed and locked the door, then climbed into the front to start the engine.

  The cargo van rumbled to life and began to make its way down the road. Jessa groaned, aching from the impact of being tossed, and rolled onto her back. She wished she could move properly. She wished she could think properly. Whatever drugs Halla had given her had really impaired her powers of cognition.

  They’d also calmed her down more than she had any right to be.

  Distantly, Jessa knew she should be scared right now, terrified, really. The man driving the cargo van wasn’t a man at all; he was a demon. Not only was he a demon created from ice in the depths of Hel, he wanted to kill her. That objective, according to Broder, would be driving him now and nothing beyond brute force, or one of Broder’s nifty Loki knives, would stop him from achieving it.

  She had neither brute force nor a nifty Loki knife.

  All these things considered, she shouldn’t be counting the black scuff marks on the ceiling of the van right now, she should be either (a) crapping her pants or (b) planning her escape. Ideally, she was pretty sure it was the latter she should doing.

  But those scuff marks were so darn interesting. That one over there looked like a giraffe.

  The van took a sharp turn to the right. Jessa slid across the floor of the van and slammed into the opposite wall. The jolt cleared her head a little. This damn fog, if only it would lift. She was certain she’d be able to do something awesome if it did.

  She forced herself not to be distracted by the scuff marks, or by the enticing lethargic exhaustion that tugged on her. She needed to swim up through this haze of apathy. Looking down at her hands, she saw that he hadn’t even bothered to bind them. Her feet were also free. Apparently this guy was really confident the drugs would do their job. Anger pushed away a little more of the cloud around her head.

  She was sick of people trying to kill or kidnap her.

  Her mind drifted to Broder. He would be pissed when he woke up and discovered she’d disappeared. She wished she could see him in the moment he realized she was gone. He was magnificent when he was pissed and protective.

  Broder was just plain magnificent.

  She’d never met a man like him in her life and she was pretty sure that if she lived a thousand years, she would never meet his equal. She never should have pushed him away. That had been amazingly stupid. She’d known her life was in danger, so she should have been sowing her wild oats. She should never have teased him, never led him on—not even for a moment. She should have jumped right into bed with him when she’d had the chance, should have just accepted she’d get her heart broken and done it anyway.

  No regrets and all that stuff. Not having sex with Broder was a pretty big regret. Now here she was, drugged and held captive by a demon. Her oat-sowing days were drastically numbered.

  She couldn’t die before she slept with Broder. She just couldn’t.

  The van took another hard turn and she slid across the floor to slam into the opposite wall. Her head rang with the impact. The hit, combined with her newfound realization that she could have sex with the hottest man in the universe if she survived this, finally lifted the fog.

  She pushed carefully to her knees, watching the demon behind the wheel very carefully. It was clear the agent thought she was incapacitated and that was slightly insulting. Carefully, she crawled to the spot behind his seat and looked around for a weapon to use. Just within her reach was a bungee cord that was probably used to secure furniture. Today it would be used to strangle a demon … if such a thing was possible.

  Oh, she hoped it was possible.

  At the very least, maybe she could force the van off the road and somehow escape.

  Reaching out, she snatched the bungee cord and stood, looping the cord around the demon’s neck and pulling back. The demon yelped and gagged. The van careened from side to side, but she bore down on the demon, using the cord around his throat to anchor herself.

  The demon made choking and wheezing sounds, starting to flail. The van jerked to the side violently and drove into a ditch. Jessa lost her footing and her hold on the cord. She collided with the back of the driver’s seat and knocked the breath out of herself, then flew backward and landed on her butt, as the van came to an abrupt halt.

  She scrambled up, panicking, as she always did when she lost her breath, to see the demon coming at her. He sported a big red welt around his throat from where she’d done her best to choke him and he looked exceptionally pissed off.

  Retreating, she soon found herself backed against the rear doors. Her eyes on the demon, her fingers found the handle and jiggled it. It was locked. She turned to give it her full attention, jiggling it harder in desperation. The demon’s hands came down on her shoulders and he forced her to face him.

  He loomed over her, much taller than she was, eyes blacker than she would imagine a black hole, his fingers digging into her shoulders painfully. His eyes were so deep and so dark, she feared she’d be sucked in and lost forever. He opened his mouth, his fangs glistening sharp white bone and as pointed as daggers. The demon stared at her for one long heartbeat, then he raised his arm and brought it down toward her face.

  It cracked against her cheekbone, pain exploded, and everything disappeared.

  “Where is Jessa?” Broder roared it through the keep. He’d looked for her everywhere on the grounds and she was nowhere to be found. Either she’d wandered away during the night—which he seriously doubted—or she’d been taken.

  Either way, she was gone and that was unacceptable.

  Silence reigned.

  “Where is Jessa?” he roared again, feeling the veins in his neck pop out. His words echoed through the foyer where he stood and past it, reaching into every corner of the keep.

  Halla appeared in the archway leading to the living room and Erik walked from his room to the head of the stairs. Erik stared down at him, his jaw locked and black resignation in his eyes. He knew it, too—Jessa had been taken by the Blight.

  “What are you yelling about?” asked Halla. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  He tried to unclench his fists and failed. “Jessa has gone missing.”

  Halla went very still and the blood drained from her face.

  Broder was on her in a flash. “Tell me.”

  “No, it’s nothing. I mean, it has to be nothing.” Halla looked confused and put a hand to her head. When she did, her sleeve slipped down her arm, revealing long, barely healed furrows.

  Broder grabbed her arm and yanked her sleeve the rest of the way up. “What the hell is this?”

  “I don’t know. I had a nightmare and I woke up with these scratches….” She trailed off, her face going even paler. She shook her head. “No. It cannot be possible.”

  “Tell me,” Broder commanded again. Halla winced and he released her arm, realizing he’d been gripping it way too hard. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  “In the dream, I met an agent of the Blight at the front gate. He gave me a syringe. I went up to Jessa’s room and shot her in the arm with it. She fought me, scratched my arms and pulled my hair, but the drug worked fast. Then I carried her to the field next to the keep, where the agent picked her up. She woke up right before the agent collected her and fought a little.” Halla looked down at her arm. “I thought it was a dream and I made the scratches myself, in my sleep. No. It’s impossible.”

  “Halla,” said Erik, who had come down the stairs to stand beside them, “you’re Valkyrie. Since when is the word impossible in your vocabulary?”

  Halla looked miserable. “I can’t believe this. She’s probably dead right now and it’s my fault.”

  “No!” The word roared out of Broder, making Halla flinch. Jessa couldn’t be dead. And then suddenly Broder knew something he hadn’t known in a thousand years.

  He knew
fear.

  He turned away from both of them, rubbing a hand over his mouth and working to get a handle on the tumult of cold emotion within him. His stomach was knotted. “She’s not dead. Not yet. We still have time to find her.”

  “Broder,” Erik broke in, “you know as well as anyone that the Blight want her dead. They would have no reason to keep her alive. Use logic. If they’d wanted her alive, they would never have tried so hard to kill her—in the parking garage, the taxicab, the airport. That means, if she was taken last night—”

  Broder made an impatient movement with his hand and Erik fell silent. He didn’t want to hear anything about logic; he only wanted to hear things that would help him find Jessa—alive. “What did the demon’s vehicle look like?”

  “Ah … it was … a white van, like the kind they use for moving furniture.”

  Broder tore out of the keep.

  “Back off.” She held out her hand as though it would stop a mad, black-eyed demon from attacking her, all the while glancing around, looking for a weapon. She was in a kitchen; there had to be a knife or something.

  “Oh, I’m definitely not backing off.” The demon rubbed his long, white hands together with glee. Apparently she was prey and he was enjoying it. He wanted her to run.

  She’d woken in a small house with a hell of a headache, but still untied. Now she understood why. The demon thought she had no chance to prevail in a battle against him—he was right—and wanted to make her death into a sporting event.

  She didn’t know where the family was that owned this house. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Likely they were more casualties in the war to stop Ragnarök.

  There! A butcher’s block with knives.

  She leapt across the room, only narrowly avoiding the grasp of the demon, and yanked a huge knife from it. No hesitation. She rotated on the ball of her foot and launched it at the demon. It flew end over end and stuck him in the chest, pointy end first.

  The demon grunted and looked down at his chest as though completely surprised she’d managed to land the shot. This had been one of the things Halla had trained her to do. A red spot appeared around the hilt of the embedded knife and quickly grew larger. She watched it, triumphant—but wary. That wound would drop a human man, but this was a demon.

  As the demon stared down at the knife, she inched her way out of the kitchen, toward the front door. The demon reached down, grabbed the handle of the knife, and pulled it from his chest as though it didn’t even hurt. His blood gushed down his stomach and soaked the front of his jeans. He didn’t even grimace.

  She bolted for the door, but he was on her in an instant. He grabbed her by the upper arm and yanked her to face him. She came around swinging, her fist hitting his jaw and splitting his lip. His head snapped to the side and she wrenched her arm free of him, staggering and running for the front door. Her fingers had just touched the doorknob when he reached her, tackling her facedown on the floor. She fought hard to twist to her back, so she’d have a chance to fight him.

  Punching and kicking like a crazy person, she managed to bring her elbow up and pop him in the chin, following that with a solid thump to the kidney … assuming demons had kidneys. Then she hit him in the stab wound. That did it. He rolled off her, bellowing in pain. She scrambled to her feet, but he was blocking her path.

  She bolted for one of the bedrooms, hoping like hell there was a lock on the door, but he tackled her again. She landed facedown on the wood floor of the hallway, hitting her forehead. She was covered in his blood. Her fingers left trails of it as she scrabbled on the hardwood in an effort to get away from him. At some point she’d received a cut to her temple and blood gushed from it now, obscuring her vision and turning the world red. She’d never known blood could sting so badly.

  Fingernails scratching the floor, she tried to pull herself away from him, but he punched her twice—once on each side—and agony exploded through her, making her cry out. All she could do was curl up in a fetal position and try not to sob. She could barely draw a breath.

  The demon grabbed her by the back of the head and yanked up, bowing her spine, then flipped her to her back. It was clear the demon had had enough of her—playtime was over. She was glad she’d injured the bastard. At least she’d gone down fighting.

  Jessa closed her eyes as the thing lowered her to the floor, his fangs pushing through his gums to make horrible daggerlike points. She wished for a reprieve, a last-minute pardon. In a flashing fantasy, she imagined Broder had discovered where the demon had taken her and was ready to burst through the door at any moment, slay her tormentor, and make everything all right again.

  But he never came.

  Jessa’s body was far too bruised and battered to defeat the incredibly strong demon, but she fought him anyway. It was no use. He only bore down on her, keeping her still. Her legs kicked and she made small enraged animal sounds that she barely recognized as coming from herself as he used her hair to pull her head back and expose her throat.

  She was pissed. Not scared, definitely not resigned—she was mad as hell. She didn’t want to die this way.

  She didn’t want to die.

  The demon hovered over her and smiled. Blood from where she’d popped him in the mouth dribbled over his lip and down his fang, making him look even more grotesque than he already did. He loved this. He’d treated her like sport and he’d won. Of course he’d won. She wasn’t fit prey for a demon. She was a rabbit to a wolf.

  Her breath rasped out of her from where he lay across her chest, compressing her lungs. Blood trickled into her eye, making it burn. His eyes burned, too—they looked like tiny black coal fires—as she stared into the endless pits of the demon who was about to murder her.

  Killed by an agent of the Blight.

  She’d never wondered much about how she’d die. If she had, she was pretty sure death by demon would not have been on her list. She was pretty sure that if she’d had a choice, in her sleep, as an old, satisfied woman, would have been what she’d have chosen.

  The demon lowered his mouth to her throat and her breath came faster. Now fear began to mix with the rage. What would death feel like? She focused on a painting of a flock of sheep in a meadow that hung on the wall of the hallway, a tranquil scene that seemed so at odds with what was now happening.

  And she felt just like one of those sheep, ready to have its throat cut and become a meal.

  The demon’s jaw closed around the column of her throat; the fangs pierced her skin, slight at first, then slid in deeper. Pain exploded through her and she bucked beneath his heavy body, a silent scream issuing from her mouth.

  The fangs slid even deeper and Jessa knew pain like she’d never known it before. Passing out would be a blessing, but she remained conscious and aware. Unfortunately, since the blood flowed just a moment later. The demon took deep pulls on her neck, sucking the blood and fluid from her veins and into his mouth.

  He made a sound as though she tasted delicious. Maybe she did.

  It seemed like the feeding went on forever, pain pulsing through her body all the time, but flaring acutely every time the demon drew on her veins. She wished for unconsciousness, something to end the agony.

  Little by little the pain ebbed. Soon it was replaced with a floaty, almost dreamy sensation. The room rocked back and forth, as if she were on a boat, or being rocked in her mother’s arms—whoever she had been.

  Soon her body began to go cold, then even colder.

  Soon after that she lost feeling in her arms and legs.

  Soon darkness started like a pinpoint in the center of her vision and blackness ate away from that point, destroying, little by little, everything in her line of sight, even the painting.

  Soon after that she felt nothing and all the sunshine fled the world.

  FIFTEEN

  Broder sped down the road leading away from the keep, not knowing if he’d chosen the right direction, just following his gut. He hated that he cared so much about this woman, hated it be
cause to care was to experience fear. He feared for her and it was like an icy fist in his stomach. It made him feel helpless and he wasn’t used to that.

  He hated it.

  Up ahead on the road he caught a flash of black. Squinting with the sun in his face, he tried to make it out. It looked like a man.

  Broder slowed the bike a small degree and saw it was a figure dressed all in black standing in the middle of the narrow road, blocking his way. Even though he hadn’t seen him in over a century, Broder knew who it was right away.

  Dmitri.

  The motorcycle had barely stopped before Broder leapt off it and barreled toward the demon. Dmitri stood stock-still, unflinching and wholly without fear as Broder grabbed him by the lapels of his black leather coat. “Where is she?” he snarled into his face.